What If?, for those of you who may not be giant nerds, is an on-again, off-again series from Marvel comics, filled with tales of alternate realities and hosted by the cosmic-powered, blue-toga'd Watcher. The Watcher's entire race are bald, emotionally detatched voyeurs in blue togas who observe other civilisations for no discernable reason* and are not adverse to telling easily-illustrated tales of the wonders of the cosmos.
The series filled two major needs: firstly, it had about a hojillion artists, and each of them got to draw the Watcher as he or she had always envisioned him, from concerned alien baby:
To grotesque, horrifying alien baby:
But more than merely a vehicle for the apparantly burning need of all comic book artists to draw their own radical new type of alien baby in a blue toga, What If? allowed comic book writers free reign: as all of the stories were set in alternate dimensions, all bets were off. Mostly, this involved taking some major or minor event in Marvel continuity, putting a new spin on it, and killing off as many characters as logically possible, from a dead Iron Man in a story about the Hulk going nuts, to a pretty cool little yarn where giant snake gods eat literally everyone on earth.
But as cool as it always was to see how Captain Britain was going to get killed off this issue, the really great thing about What If? was when it suddenly veered off at right angles and gave you something like this:
Ghost Rider getting ready to sacrifice Pope John Paul II. I don't even remember why anymore. I'm just glad I saved the picture.
JOHN APPROVED
*Note to any comic book nerds that may read this post: Earth X was a shitty reimagining of the Marvel cosmology, and I choose to ignore it, so there.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Review of Comic Book Hilarity, by Johnathan
click it! click it good.
Ok, so as usual I'm starting my review with an image taken from a comic book, and as usual that image has been selected because it made me giggle when I saw it for the first time. Unusually, this panel has not been spirited away from a mid-Sixties comic novel, but rather from an issue of Shade the Changing Man, c. 1993. Now, it's not that contemporary (oh shit, '93 isn't that contemporary anymore, is it? Curse you, Father Time!) comics to not bring the laffs with them when they come to visit, it's just that we've all become so much more aware of our senses of humour since der Sixties. The above panel, featuring Ernest Hemingway clobbering a mutated alien police officer while James Joyce eggs him on, could certainly have occurred in a 1965 issue of Superman, but if it had, it wouldn't have been because someone had realized ahead of time that it'd be hilarious (well, probably not, anyway). It would have just happened. Superman would be dicking around in the past - telling people about the future, getting involved in important events, daring the laws of causality to be true, the usual - and he'd run into Hemingway and Joyce, and there'd be a scrap, because there always was. And that's why it would have been funnier to have found this exact panel in that 1965 Superman: because nobody involved meant for shit like this:
so very funny. They just wanted a picture of Clark Kent wrestling some guy, 'cause it was part of the plot. The result: comic gold. Cheap comic gold. Comic fool's gold. Yeah.
JOHN APPROVED
Wait, what did I just approve of?
Ok, so as usual I'm starting my review with an image taken from a comic book, and as usual that image has been selected because it made me giggle when I saw it for the first time. Unusually, this panel has not been spirited away from a mid-Sixties comic novel, but rather from an issue of Shade the Changing Man, c. 1993. Now, it's not that contemporary (oh shit, '93 isn't that contemporary anymore, is it? Curse you, Father Time!) comics to not bring the laffs with them when they come to visit, it's just that we've all become so much more aware of our senses of humour since der Sixties. The above panel, featuring Ernest Hemingway clobbering a mutated alien police officer while James Joyce eggs him on, could certainly have occurred in a 1965 issue of Superman, but if it had, it wouldn't have been because someone had realized ahead of time that it'd be hilarious (well, probably not, anyway). It would have just happened. Superman would be dicking around in the past - telling people about the future, getting involved in important events, daring the laws of causality to be true, the usual - and he'd run into Hemingway and Joyce, and there'd be a scrap, because there always was. And that's why it would have been funnier to have found this exact panel in that 1965 Superman: because nobody involved meant for shit like this:
so very funny. They just wanted a picture of Clark Kent wrestling some guy, 'cause it was part of the plot. The result: comic gold. Cheap comic gold. Comic fool's gold. Yeah.
JOHN APPROVED
Wait, what did I just approve of?
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Review of Some Guy D357roying the Legend of Zelda, by paul
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5245277851446670151
This guy beat TLOZ in 32 minutes.
APPROVED
This guy beat TLOZ in 32 minutes.
APPROVED
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Review of owning, by paul
Counterstrike servers create about 10 deaths a minute
(based on myown observations, deaths seen and unseen
but generated by a server so, someone saw the death
or could see the death, it happened, it was a game event.
A servers containing 12 - 16 people, over a varity of levels
maintain an avarage of 9-10 deaths a minute.
Its possible that this could be much higher, but do to the
nature of a win scenario in COunter Strike, being almost a
zero sum game, ie at least one team must lose most
if not all of its members in a loss, it
is rare to see fewer than 9-10 a minute. )
15360 minutes in 16 hours of play a day.
5606400 minutes of css a year which means
56064000 deaths on one server a year. In a year we see:
1207170048000 so thats 1.2 trillion(13 digit number)
1.2 trillion virtual deaths caused by counterstrike alone,
if evryone in the world played Counterstrike
(7 billion) that would mean that
each person gets to kill 172 people... ... ...great
The national debt of the united states is 8.4 trillion dollars
The US natinal debt increases by
1680000000(10 digit) a day
all counterstrike servers known by gamespy generate
3307315200(10 digit) virtual deaths a day,
roughly twice as many virtual deaths to virtual dollars
in fact , if one added all othe online gaming deaths,
the numbers would be quite different they would
be prolly 100 times higher or more.
When I own, I like to keep things in perspective.
When i take on the online charcter f10, I like to
get the message out about just how many virtual deaths
can occur. I don't approve of death, but virtual death
is also wrong.
N07 4PPR0V3D
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Review of Superman as husband, by Johnathan.
Granted, this is a dream sequence - Supes' cousin Supergirl is hell-bent on finding der Man of Steel a wife (and incidentally causing untold damage to the space-time continuum and my suspension of disbelief in the process) and so visions of marital servitude are naturally enough dancing in her head.
All that aside, though: Superman is a terrible better half, just terrible. Here are some reasons:
a) Superman is a master roboticist/ virtual demigod, yet poor Mrs. Kent still apparently spends her days puttering around their horribly-decorated split-level bungalow, while her so-called better half has exciting adventures in exotic lands. She apparently has so little to do that she has become the greatest cook in all of creation, when really she should be spending her days in a Martian pleasure-palace, waited on hand and foot by automatons and subjugated supervillians.
b) This alien guy. I've read plenty of Sixties Superman comics, and I gotta say: 75-90% of the time, anyone that the Big Blue befriends turns out to have a heart full of betrayal and a secret stash of kryptonite. If he keeps bringing home every 'friend' that he makes once he's outside the ionosphere, sooner or later ol' wifey's going to get fragged. And her with nary a robot in sight to protect her...
Even assuming that Superman never accidentally brings home his new pal the Predator or something, this is a troubling little scene. Why? Three words: explosive allergic reaction. I get the impression that the Two Space Amigos have just dropped in unannounced, and Super-housefrau has pulled the latest in the endless series of meals that she cooks just to ease the bitter loneliness of her existence off of the stove and served it up. Further, I'm betting that even the Universe's Greatest Cook doesn't constantly have a series of different meals on the go, each tailored to a different alien biochemistry, and that one day an unexpected extraterrestrial dinner guest is going to end up as a thin film spattered liberally throughout the dining room. Come to think of it... maybe it's already happened, and that's why the walls are such a terrible shade of yellow.
NOT APPROVED
As a final aside: at the end of the story, Superman described his ideal bride, and it turned out to be someone just like Supergirl, but not his cousin. Uk.
NOT APPROVED
All that aside, though: Superman is a terrible better half, just terrible. Here are some reasons:
a) Superman is a master roboticist/ virtual demigod, yet poor Mrs. Kent still apparently spends her days puttering around their horribly-decorated split-level bungalow, while her so-called better half has exciting adventures in exotic lands. She apparently has so little to do that she has become the greatest cook in all of creation, when really she should be spending her days in a Martian pleasure-palace, waited on hand and foot by automatons and subjugated supervillians.
b) This alien guy. I've read plenty of Sixties Superman comics, and I gotta say: 75-90% of the time, anyone that the Big Blue befriends turns out to have a heart full of betrayal and a secret stash of kryptonite. If he keeps bringing home every 'friend' that he makes once he's outside the ionosphere, sooner or later ol' wifey's going to get fragged. And her with nary a robot in sight to protect her...
Even assuming that Superman never accidentally brings home his new pal the Predator or something, this is a troubling little scene. Why? Three words: explosive allergic reaction. I get the impression that the Two Space Amigos have just dropped in unannounced, and Super-housefrau has pulled the latest in the endless series of meals that she cooks just to ease the bitter loneliness of her existence off of the stove and served it up. Further, I'm betting that even the Universe's Greatest Cook doesn't constantly have a series of different meals on the go, each tailored to a different alien biochemistry, and that one day an unexpected extraterrestrial dinner guest is going to end up as a thin film spattered liberally throughout the dining room. Come to think of it... maybe it's already happened, and that's why the walls are such a terrible shade of yellow.
NOT APPROVED
As a final aside: at the end of the story, Superman described his ideal bride, and it turned out to be someone just like Supergirl, but not his cousin. Uk.
NOT APPROVED
Labels
Forbidden Love,
Supergirl,
Superman
Review of ankles, by Johnathan.
Ankles are good, in that - like all worthwhile joints - they help you to move. Plus, they're handy for use in jokes about how old someone is, as the fetishes of yesteryear (ankles, wrists, knees, post-marital sex), are totally good for a laugh. Ankles are also home to anklets, which are slightly questionable as jewelry, but have a totally bitchin' name. Anklet. Without ankles, we'd all be tottering around like poorly designed robots, which would be hilarious for a couple of days, but would probably get old quick.
However, I twisted my ankle something fierce this morning, so:
JOHN DISAPPROVED
However, I twisted my ankle something fierce this morning, so:
JOHN DISAPPROVED
Labels
complaining
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